Version of Spades

There are many types of spades

Spades with blind bids

In this version of Spades, any player that is more than 100 points behind the player with the highest amount of points may bid before looking at his cards. If he then makes the contract, he receives 20 points per trick instead of 10 points. No points are given for overtricks.

This version of Spades can be combined with most other variants of Spades, e.g. Spades with two jokers.

Nil bids spades

In this version of Spades, a player is allowed to bid zero. So, there is no minimum amount of tricks that must be bid. If a player bids zero and takes no tricks, she is awarded with 100 points. If she bids zero and takes one or more tricks, 100 points is deducted from her score. In this version of Spades, it is therefore possible for a player to end up with a minus score.

Punishment for overtricks

There are versions of Spades where overtricks are called “bags” and each time a player accumulates 10 bags, she loses 100 points. In this type of Spades, fulfilling the contract exactly is better in the long run than trying to accumulate a few extra points through overtricks.

Spades with two jokers

This variant of Spades is played with two joker cards that are added to the deck. One joker is designated Big Joker, while the other joker card is the Little Joker. The jokers count as additional spades. The ranking of the spades thus become like this:

Big Joker
Small Joker
Ace of Spades
King of Spades
Queen of Spades
Jack of Spades
Ten of Spades
Nine of Spades
Eight of Spades
Seven of Spades
Six of Spades
Five of Spades
Four of Spades
Three of Spades
Two of Spades

When this variant of Spades is played by two players or four players, the deuce of clubs and the deuce of diamonds are removed from the deck before the game starts.

When this variant of Spades is played by three players, no cards are removed.

When this variant of Spades is played by five players, all four deuces are removed from the deck before the game starts.